Pirate Bay Verdict: Guilty

As you’ve undoubtedly seen on every other website in the universe, the verdict is in. The four defendants from the Pirate Bay have been found guilty of copyright infringement and sentenced to 1 year in prison and some pretty large fines. This could be a pretty important case since it deals with the blurry area between supplying material and supplying a means to get material. Though the verdict is obviously bad for the individuals, the site seems to be thriving from the media exposure. They’ve stated that the site will stay up. We’ve been watching this since it began, and now we’re curious what this means for the rest of the file sharing world.

Post navigation

149 thoughts on “Pirate Bay Verdict: Guilty”

Comment navigation

They’re not guilty of copyright infringement – but contributory copyright infringement. That simply means they’re guilty by association – because they didn’t do anything to stop a fellow, they’re guilty.

With the help of piratebay more than 20 people from my envirounment became the computer and internet lovers by learning the possibilities of software they could use for their life and bussiness. No of the marketing efforts of the huge companies could achieve this goal. this is more the loss for corpoations than the victory.

The problem with the current laws is that they’ve become so vague and over reaching that just about anyone can be found guiltily of something… meaning that if someone in a position of power doesn’t like you they can just point a finger and they’re bound to turn up some form of illegal activity.

The specific problem with this law is that it shouldn’t be the duty of network owners to police what happens on that network.

The phone company isn’t responsible for listening in on conversations to determine if anyone is transmitting illegal data, similarly the post office doesn’t open and inspect packages to determine if people are sending illegal items. Why should a computer network be any different?

I’m sorry but it clearly states on their policy page “the responsibility lies upon the user to not spread malicious, false or illegal material using the tracker.” Therefore why are the owners being prosecuted?

Stupid government. I know this may be off topic slightly but here is an extract from the Hacker’s Manifesto:
“This is our world now…the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of the service already existing without paying for what could be dirt cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore… and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge… and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals.”

When I had first heard they had been convicted, I thought of a good way of getting back at those who have convicted them. They all have address books (the tracker), which links them to people (the torrents), who may or may not be criminals (the files). Now tell me: Who should be punished?

This has gone beyond a joke and to be honest could potentially set a dangerous precedent if this goes through(i.e there appeal fails).

There is nothing stopping anyone from taking Google or anyone else who links or provides reference to copyrighted material for free as in torrents, keygens, hell even images. I agree the internet needs some form of control and restriction in some cases but this is not one of them.

In addition as a result of this there is a high risk that ISP’s will begin trying to block torrent traffic even more than they already are so as to protect themselves from being made liable and I’m sure there will be many people who use torrents legitimately who will needlessly be affected.

We’re approaching the point where all emails and network traffic will be analysed and there will be no freedom if nothing is done now to stop this decline in freedom and the boys at pirate bay are making a good stand and I hope for all our sakes there appeal clears them.

What a shame. Bad representation and stupid (and widely published) arrogance and they’re surprised they lost? There’s numerous precedence that would have supported their case – instead they pretty much just kept chanting “na na nu na na you can’t touch us ha ha ha”. Perhaps now they’ll put aside their sophomoric attitudes and put up a serious defense when the appeals come around.

IANAL, and I haven’t a clue how Civil law works as opposed to common law. but in the american courts, the best way to win this case would be on an appeal.

why? precedent! precedents are not set in the american courts on a single case, they are only set on appeals. so, losing the first case and having it over turned on appeals would set the precedent that all further cases conforming to what the appeal judge sees as the defining details of the case would be decided the same way. depending on the wording, it becomes a situation where, in future cases, the lower court must follow the precedent.

This case won’t be over, even if they spend the next year in jail and pay the fine tomorrow. They won’t drop it, the people won’t ignore it, and the internet will go on just like it did when sharereactor went away. the pirates will keep sharing.

when i a buy DVD, i mean i buy a MOVIE which is contained in DVD format, i expect it to be mine.. you sell it already now its mine. whatever i do with it, sharing or not its none of their business anymore because the DVD is mine.

in this case, nobody should be blamed but the movie production itself for making it available in electronic format. if they didnt release dvd version maybe there will be no piracy. piratebay i just a “show off” that they are acting on this matter. all the punishment is to scare us from sharing files,,which is owned by us.

Your understanding of a common law system is bad Muri. What has happend has set a precedent, even so that precedent can be nullified by a higher court. Just because there is a heirachy doesn’t mean it gets used. If the legal advice given to the Freedom Four (i like it i just coined it) is they will loose their appeal no appeal will be sought and the precedent will stand. Also as far as can be said a proper common law system should transcend the broader catagories of law, so it applies to civil as well as criminal law. Forgive me my assumption as well but surely for a true precedent to be set it would have to be given by the highest court in the land (which may be the appeal court). Even so they still get things wrong, since 1996 the UK HoL has had the option to not be bound by its previous decisions as even 7 legal minds are not always right, and social standards change as in RvR, forgive the spelling it’s late and i have had a lager or two!

If I spent thousands of hours writing a program, creating an image, performing a song or building a robot, I know I’d like to be able to convince other people that they should pay me for my work, and then I might spend another thousands of hours doing it again.

People like the Pirate Bay operators take that possibility away from me by giving my work away for free and not letting me negotiate with costomers on a fair price agreed to by both of us.

Lots of people spend their hard work creating things others will pay for and this kind of attitude that everything should be free will be the ruin of innovation.

Money alone does not breed good ideas or innovation. It is a curiosity and passion for the work someone does that drives them to do it well. Although some of the time an innovation cannot take place without money, and it stands to reason that if the people supplying the money stop, for fear of piracy. Innovation could slow down. Innovation always starts with a good idea. Ideas are not only free, but thanks to the united states of Capitalism the money will for the most part follow the broke guys with the million dollar ideas; who in turn usually don’t make squat because they signed away the rights to the capitalist who supplied the funds to see his vision through, because he never cared about the money only that he gut to prove the concept.

It boils down to this. Guy who writs said Script, Program, Music… Dont make shit compared to the people supplying the money to make it happen. you don’t see them crying do you.

regardless of the outcome or any new precedents, filesharing will go on. If tpb dies, a dozen new sites will pop up to fill the gap. if all isp’s block all torrent traffic, someone will create a new filesharing protocol to circumvent it.
this will never end.

I guess the pirates at piratebay didn’t sound convincing when they claimed they weren’t knowingly facilitating piracy.

al-
You’re missing the point. It’s not about *you*, it’s about *me*. I don’t want to pay for goods and services, especially software because it’s like information and stuff. And how can you own the land, anyway?

MUSIC and MOVIES should be legal to copy, and plays of non-“owned” copies should be self-reported using any method that works(including scrobbling with some service provider’s tool) and paid to the artist and composer (not the record company) at a quarter of a cent per listen if I don’t have a license. I don’t want to be evil, but I want to listen to the MP3s I have and I want to trade them. Take the money at some statutory rate, or leave it and I’ll keep listening. I would be glad to pay $1k a year and see it go to exactly the artists I listen to (willingly).

Stop chaining up the media. It stifles free expression. The statutory/compulsory licensing scheme should apply to all the forms of listening for those that don’t want to pay up front. Don’t make everyone with an MP3 a criminal. You’ll find many are willing to pay per listen when you let them choose how they listen!

1) An ISP that blocks bit-torrent data will lose customers desiring that type of access, and other customers will use less efficient “masking” techniques, such as Protocol Obfuscation. This allows the data to be transferred through allowed conduits, at the expense of network efficiency. In other words, user volume will go down, while per-user traffic will increase.

2) With regards to Copyright versus Creativity, which are you more likely to enjoy; Music created for money, or music created for music? In 20 years, almost all of the best programs I have ever used were written and distributed as Freeware or Shareware. Most of the rest were offered as free Betas, for development! Free data can benefit from an expanded user base, allowing increased user feedback opportunities.

One last thought: Microsoft openly acknowledged that torrents helped distribute their new Windows 7 Beta faster than their servers ever could. When torrents are not available, I already use software that masks my connections. It is totally serverless (true peer-to-peer) and it has never stopped working, 100% uptime for over 7 years on the same “file-sharing” program. Open data distribution is here to stay, and courts, corporations and copyright-holders can cry, witch-hunt, and shoot themselves in the foot (like gas-guzzling auto-makers), or they can embrace the new era and see their R&D benefit from free, rapid distribution and a near-limitless user base.

who remembers how much ps1 games cost? was there much piracy then?
now who remembers how much ps2 games cost? remember the 4 or so different ways to get your ps2 to play pirated games?
now how much does a well made ps3/360 game cost? a shitload that’s how much

people are sick of shoveling out money to corporations if i knew the developers were getting the money i pay for something and that the developers were setting fair prices than i would buy every game and app that i like

its time for a new business model perhaps like the app store the developer chooses his price and most of the time it is reasonable unlike the 300 they want for office 07

Why don’t they put these kinds of resources towards catching real internet criminals like producers and distributors of child porn and sites that host cp? You distribute a movie or a song that’s going to be old hat in a couple of months, how are you realy hurting anyone? You get hurt by going to the theater and watching something that ain’t worth a damn or buying a cd with a bunch of songs that suck just for a particular track, you just wasted your hard earned money, if it’s worth watching and you caught it on the web first though you might go the the theater to watch it, and if it’s realy good you might bring along a couple of friends. I remember catching the hulk screener on P2P boy did it suck, glad I didn’t waste my monies there, the again I’ve caught many others that were pretty good and did go to see in the theater.

If you don’t own the rights for the anime in the first place then your already in a worse situation that the Pirate Bay guys. There issue was providing links to copyrighted material for the sakes of arguments anyway its a bit more complicated than that. You however are potentially providing and hosting copyrighted material which depending on your country of origin can face hefty penalties.

> You’re missing the point. It’s not about *you*, > it’s about *me*. I don’t want to pay for goods > and services, especially software because it’s > like information and stuff. And how can you own > the land, anyway?

Jimmys,

Do I understand you correctly?

You REALLY think that if I spend my life writing a program YOU like to use that you should be able to steal it from me?

they have been judget on intent, which means,
the court deduced their intent by looking
at the website and it’s facilities, linking
them with the history of the owners.

google doesn’t get sued because their stated
and displayed intent is to make anything
searchable, they also have money in charity
projects.

news sites dont get sued, because their stated
and displayed intent is spreading of press
and newsworthy items.

the intent of pirate bay is, stated and displayed
(hence the name) piracy. even though they
claim that users shouldnt infringe copyrights,
they dont block or remove copyrighted materials,
they dont even try. if you were judge, you would
come to the same ruling, wouldnt you?

Tpb is not sharing copyrighted material. Tpb is a tool, that can be (and is) used to share copyrighted material though.

Computers are not made for pirating. Computers are tools, that can be (and is) used to share copyrighted material.

Internet service providers don’t exist for pirating. ISP’s provide a service, that can be (and is) used to share copyrighted material.

Same thing goes for cellphones (they have some hefty storage space now), mp3-players, all forms of computer storage. Hell, you could write software that allowed you to store an mp3 on printed paper and retrieve it with a scanner! Basically, RIAA/MPAA/Sony/Warner etc. should just sue everyone who makes, owns or in any way uses ANY form of computer equipment, pens-and-paper, or any other possible means of storage!

Same goes for knife- and gun manufacturers. Obviously, they are culprits in every armed robbery, armed assault, war and murder committed.

Now, I am not one of those idiots claiming everything should be free. However, if I was capable of making music or games people wanted to play, I’d sell it myself online instead of getting something like 2-5% of profit generated while the rest went to publishers, stores, record companies etc.

An album costs about $20 here in Norway. The artist likely gets at most $1 per album sold. Imagine if you could go to a website, buy some credits and download or stream music at a cost equal to roughly $5 per album and knowing that 90% of this went to the person who actually made the stuff you are enjoying!

With current internet speeds, it takes me less time to download a movie than it takes to go out and rent it. Renting a movie costs roughly $8. Cut out the middle man, set up an easily accessible web service and allow me to quickly and easily find reviews, read comments and then pay $5 to stream/download the movie I want to watch and I’d do it rather than pirate it EVERY TIME!

The problem with music and movies these days is this: I want to watch a movie or listen to an album. Therefore I..
A: Head into town and hope that at least one place actually have the cd/dvd I want so I don’t have to wait for a backorder. Then, pay $20/$70 (of which the creator gets next-to-nothing) for the cd/dvd I want.
B: Download it in max 30 minutes.

or, optimally but not realistically

C: Pay the creator for the privilige to download his/her work, quickly and easily.

Well even though there are warnings on the site and such, its already been shown that all those site warnings, those ‘click to accept the terms’ on sites and when you install programs are worthless since no one reads them. Get any half-assed lawyer and he’ll argue that easily..

Years ago I found napster, I was not a rapper nor cared to be but did find some of the downloads had some good beats. So along with my collection of Alan Jackson, Kiss and Molly Hatchett, I also would order Nelly or Luda if they had a pretty good song. Well since Metallica came along and jerked my preview abilities I’ve gone from being a columbia house 20 cd’s a year to buying one cd about every 2 years. Music industry, your loss. Metallica I’ve thrown away your sandman record I legally purchased in the trash and deleted your files I dowloaded illigally. Oh yeah, I also didnt care too much for heavy metal till I downloaded Sandman. Then you took a newly aquired fan to court…

The sooner that people WAKE UP and see the way this is going, the better. Fair use should apply to “legacy” material (i.e. a TV series published in 2002 and now defunct) as it is unlikely to be released on DVD due to the cost of doing so.

What next, will carrying a pendrive be “facilitating copyright infringement”.. talk about creating a police state. Its bad enough as it is, pretty soon buying an external hard disk or writeable media will require some sort of identification…

What about people who have legitimately purchased a DVD and had it fail due to cheap manufacturing? As the law stands you have to pay again which is stupid as it encourages the manufacturers not to use quality control to increase their own profits.

Don’t even get me started on modchips.. since when has buying as device which allows an out of date console to be used again (i.e. as a low end PC) therefore reducing carbon footprint and E-waste? been illegal? All those “dead” Xboxes and PS2s could be reused for people who can’t afford to buy a new PC.
-A

Isn’t it funny that piracy is harmful to authors (and somewhat to the whole society) mainly by disabling economy of scale? It is no more possible to sell the same product repeatedly and get ludicrous returns; the author gets paid only once, after completing the work for what (s)he was hired (hey, current cubicle fauna wouldn’t notice anyway). The rest is employer’s greed and similar motives, the “burden” actually shifts toward him. On the other hand, products become less affordable for individuals or smaller groups. No more investment in creation of things that nobody needs yet, and in creation of that “need”? No more trivial business models? Oh, good ole’ communism.

@keradaku,
you said, “when i a buy DVD, i mean i buy a MOVIE which is contained in DVD format, i expect it to be mine.. you sell it already now its mine. whatever i do with it, sharing or not its none of their business anymore because the DVD is mine.”

when you buy a dvd, you may be purchasing the disk, but regarding the movie that is contained on that disk, you aren’t buying the movie. What you are buying is a license to view the movie. Buying the movie itself (and the rights of ownership) would likely cost several million dollars in some cases.

The DVD is yours, you can do with it what you want. You can shred it, you can sandblast it, you can set it on fire.

But since you do not own the movie, you cannot do with it what you want. You only own a license, which can be traded and sold, but not copied.